


Serenity and a dream

by TNKT



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Fire, Gen, Loss, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-17 06:06:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17554820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TNKT/pseuds/TNKT
Summary: A man wakes up in a strangely familiar place of quiet mist.Then the thin frame of a lonely girl appears, and the memories she's brought with her pull him under.





	Serenity and a dream

My bare feet crushed what felt like wet strands of grass and a shiver traveled up my spine. I opened my eyes slowly, blinking away the strands of sleep that hung from my lashes, and saw an impenetrable gray shimmer shrouding my surroundings. Mist gently rolled across my skin, soft and welcoming like an old friend's touch. I'd been here before, in this place I could not see, but it had been a long time ago.

"Hello," said a voice from behind me.

I turned around, surprised, and saw a girl standing a few steps away. As I faced her from the side, she reminded me of a single graceful reed swaying in the rain-heavy wind. Long white hair cascaded down her thin shoulders, and she only wore a clear smock that reached the beginning of her thighs. Her skin was transluscent and she shone softly like a firefly at night.

I finally spoke, unable to mask my disbelief. "It's you..."

She smiled when I recognized her and tilted her head slightly, the visible part of her face suddenly alight with pure, childlike glee. "I knew you hadn't forgotten me!"

I shook my head. "Of course not."

She turned her back to me and her ageless frame receded in the ever-shifting mass that surrounded us, her thin voice calling out to me. "Follow me."  
My legs moved of their own accord and I was pulled into her wake like a paper boat down the current. I could see her hair floating at her nape in a loyal nimbus cloud, and a rainbow of stars twirling around her small ankles in a neverending dance. Her feet soundlessly padded the flat transparent ground that strangely felt like fresh grass beneath my own. The frail shape of her back beckoned me as always, alluring but ever eluding, always dancing a few steps ahead. I already knew how pointless it was to try and reach out to touch her.

I heard her speak in that singsong voice once more, her words cruelly innocent. "I wondered when I could come to you again."

I searched for an excuse as we walked in silence, for her as much as for myself. It had been so long, and there was none. She must have known why we could not meet anymore.

"It was never the right time," I ended up telling her.

She pulled back the gray shimmer like a veil and vanished behind it, and though she was suddenly out of sight, I was tranquil. I knew I wouldn't lose her yet. She reappeared, playfully poking the side of her face out of the misty curtain. Her eye was a pale opalescent shade, reminiscent of the tender pink of a seashell's interior.

"Did you miss me?"

"Very much."

The eye sparkled in quiet joy, and she disappeared again. I walked forward and felt around in the unsubstantial wall for an edge, a crack, anything I could slip through to join her. I heard her laugh ring out like bells, and slowly the mist parted, just large enough for me to crawl through.

The setting changed around me, and I was back there.

A sharp pain penetrated my skin and I winced, and I looked down to see that shards of glass had cut up the soles of my feet. Heat radiated around us, and there was a sticky clamminess to my hands that was all too familiar. Nausea rushed over me and I barely stopped myself from gagging.  
She was standing before me now, and her white hair curled and thrashed in the flames. I quickly turned my eyes away from the sight of this unbearable memory. 

"Look at me," her soft voice said in my ear.

I couldn't.

She appeared in front of me, forcing me to witness the horror I'd inflicted on the both of us. That hidden part of her face I couldn't see before was now plainly visible, the blackened and disfigured evidence of my sin, vicious and dissonant amidst the beautiful harmony of her entire being.   
She gently took hold of my face, her touch as soft as a butterfly's wing, but her left hand had the stench of death and I could feel her scorched flesh against my skin. I couldn't breathe. I could only choke out some poor, weak, useless words. 

"I'm sorry..."

She looked sad when she smiled again, but only from the right side, the side that wasn't a mess of charred, congealed flesh locked into a painful rictus.

"There's nothing you can do now. I was meant to die away as soon as you killed her."

"Don't go," I whispered. "It's too hard if you're never there."

"It's the price to pay," she simply said, and the truth hurt.

"I never meant to do it," I told her in a voice I willed to be calm and strong, but with a single wobble my voice turned into an ugly plea, and I knew she could see me for what I was. A horrid, sobbing, weak and guilty mess that nothing would ever redeem.

"But you did it." The softness of her voice was relentless, and to me, had the ring of a death-knell. "You can never take it back. Never."

"Stay with me," I begged, because I knew I couldn't pretend to be strong before her. If she vanished, I would be nothing. "Please don't tell me you're leaving me for good."

She didn't answer. I noticed with horror the dark tendrils that creeped out from beneath the burnt skin of her face and snaked down her slender neck, corrupting all the light that they touched into dead, pulseless shadows.

"I missed you so much, and now you're finally here... Only to tell me that you're giving up on me?!" My tone of voice was accusing and angry. I was growling and snarling like a wounded animal, but I couldn't help it. My sanity was crumbling beneath me.

"You were the one to chase me away," she answered, and the darkness consumed more of her diaphanous skin, turning it into brittle charcoal that oozed thick black blood.

"Don't leave me!" I tried to grab onto her, but the touch of my hand on her white arm immediately spread more tendrils. I quickly jerked my hand away, but it was too late. They wrapped around her fragile member faster than I could react and before long, both of her arms had turned into a monstrous difformity of decomposing blood and ashes. 

"I'm sorry," I panted, panic drowning out all rational thoughts. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

All that remained was her eye. That single, beautiful, tranquil eye that gazed at me in sorrow.

"I'm sorry!" I screamed. "Stay! Stay with me! Don't leave me by myself!"

The black void of her mouth shaped words. "I can't."

And then her pearly iris sank in the depths of dark, dark waters, and everything spun around me. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. The darkness swelled and swallowed me whole, sweeping me off my feet and pulling me deeper down in the waters that smelled of burning flesh and iron. I couldn't breathe. My lungs ached for air. I desperately clawed at the memories that surrounded me, reaching a hand out towards the surface, too far. My lungs burned. I opened my mouth to scream, but the last bubbles of precious air that escaped from my throat were swept away by the current, and the foul liquid filled my mouth. I tasted metal, and the thick blood clogged my airway. I felt it slide down into my lungs, I felt myself drown.

Then I opened my eyes, heaving, blinking away the warm tears that clung to my lashes. I saw a fan hanging from a white ceiling, chopping away at the silence in the room. Cool air gently rolled across my skin, light and chilling in the morning light.

"Did you have a bad dream?" asked a voice next to me.

I looked at the woman that laid in bed with her head against my chest. Another one whose name I didn't remember, that I hadn't bothered to learn.

"...No," I answered.

I was here now, in this place I knew all too much. A room littered with all of my belongings, posters, a guitar, clothes, a wardrobe in the right corner and a desk beneath the window. A room that had turned bland at some point during last year, like all the places I'd come in contact with since. The emptiness in my chest, the debilitating sensation of moving forward without purpose, the loss of taste and smell and colours, all that I'd been able to live with thinking that it could get better one day. Until today. Today, I knew she was truly gone and would never come back.

"You should leave," I added.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey pumpkin.  
> I hope you enjoyed this little story. I wrote it some time ago, remembered it and thought I might as well post it after some polishing. I know this is a pretty open-ended story, so I'd love it if you told me your interpretation if his dream and reactions, and what he's going to do now.  
> Thanks for reading, leave a comment if you feel like it!


End file.
